The price
by youte
Summary: 216 "The Miller's daughter" - There always was a price to pay. Maybe, this was theirs.


_During the last scene in 216. Possibly semi AU._

_(I hated this theory like a lot of people, but this scene and the great acting made me rethink everything. I just love the possibility now, I mean think of all the possible things this could lead to! Oh, the tragedy!)_

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**The price**

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For a moment, a few lingering seconds, the pain blinded her.

She turned and saw her daughter there, looking unsure, with in her eyes this frightened and terribly sorrowful gleam that she always had as a child when she had one way or another disobey her mother's strict orders.

Something… something was beating there, in her chest. And the pain… all these feelings she had never wanted, the anger, the rage, the fear.

The love.

"Mother?"

Her tone of voice was thick with dread, her gaze was already misty (again) – and Cora remembered all those times when she had to remind her weak daughter that crying wasn't ladylike, that all these feelings Regina hadn't known how to control was degrading her and them all.

_A Queen has no weaknesses._

And after all these years, after all the magic and all her doings, Regina was still unable to suppress and hide her emotions and tears.

It was ridiculous.

The love in Cora's chest grew and warmed her, and she smiled, a true smile, because yes, she really loved her daughter, truly loved her, and at this moment… at this moment it was stronger and overwhelming because there was pride there too, in the middle of this storm of feelings, there was pride.

Because her daughter still knew how to cry.

And Regina's smile…

Hesitant, but tentatively happy, it was the most beautiful thing Cora had ever seen, more precious than all the gold and more powerful than all the magic in the world.

Her daughter, her little girl who was all grown up and technically older than her but still so, so fragile, her precious princess who had become a queen and a strong witch, who had in more ways than one outdone her mother.

How she loved her…

_Her name is Regina, for one day she will be Queen._

It was when the pain in her chest changed and she felt herself fall than all the other feelings invaded Cora.

"Mother? Mother! What's wrong?!"

She tried to escape them but it was too late, her realization had opened the door for all those emotions that were coming through.

Because the smile that had disappeared when Regina had caught her had seemed terribly out of place on her beautiful face. Because her eyes which once upon a time had been the color of honey when alight with her laughs and her love and her smiles had stayed dark and cold, full of that void dug by loneliness and pain and jealously and hate.

_Love is weakness._

And Cora remembered Daniel, and that love shining in their young eyes, she recalled the beautiful royal wedding she had forced her daughter into, she remembered all these stories about the Evil Queen, manipulator, witch, murderer.

_I don't want power. I want to be free._

And for the first time of her life, Cora felt regrets, regrets which stole her breath quicker than the injury, the pain and the poison.

Her daughter didn't know how to smile anymore. Her daughter didn't laugh anymore. Her daughter, who she had so often in the past belittled because of her altruism and her humility and her sensibility without succeeding in extinguishing this light in her, had finally been swallowed by darkness.

_This is your happy ending._

_You destroyed everything! I loved him!_

Hearing again the tears and the accusations and the despair in the broken voice of her child was excruciating, as had been this suffering in her brown eyes slowly destroying her. Cora remembered Rumpel's warnings about True Love, the most powerful magic of all, and she knew then that she had sealed their fates that night, when she had broken this sacred connection, when she had forced her own daughter to endure a loss from which she would most likely never heal.

Or had she damned them all even earlier ? During this other night, when she had chosen power over love? When she had decided to take her own heart to gain the strength to say no to Rumpel, to the family they had wanted to build? When she had turned her back to this life they had dreamed of together?

A life in a big house, full of partnership and love and magic and deals, with this man she had fallen in love with, with this child she had so desired…

"It… would have been enough," she whispered, and she saw in the terrorized eyes of her daughter that she didn't understand.

Regina couldn't understand, she didn't know, she couldn't know.

Oh, the irony was cruel.

If Cora hadn't taken this decision before her child's birth, if she hadn't lied and hidden, if… Everything could have been different.

_You changed the contract, Rumpel. __You only get your own child. And any baby I have, it won't be yours._

Rumpel… He was surely the one responsible for what was happening. The candle. Of course, the candle.

Regina's body was trembling against her own but her arms around her stayed strong. A rush of intense affection submerged Cora and sweetened the pain, because her idiot girl was staying there, holding her horrible mother, her True Love's murderer, the woman who had destroyed her since childhood, the one who had plotted all her life to shape her into what she needed.

_Oh, Regina_. Would she ever learn?

Was it really too late for her? Had Cora destroyed her completely this time? The pain came back viciously and with it, a sudden wish, burning, violent. She dreamed of another future for her daughter, another ending than the one Cora had worked for all her life.

She watched her, this stunning woman, so beautiful even when in pain, dignified even in defeat, a true queen.

But what a high price they had to pay for this crown.

In another life, the laughs of her daughter would have bounced off the walls in their beautiful home, and her eyes would have always stayed a light hazel. In another life, maybe, Cora would have known how to love her, how to be a mother.

"_You…_ would have been enough."

Her eyes closed without her consent and she felt herself fade away. She hoped that the love she felt, pure like it could never have been in other circumstances, touched her daughter. Just once.

Just this time.

"Mother ? What's going on?"

The voice was growing away, but Cora heard Rumpel's, cold and distant and…

Rumpel. To which end had he gone to destroy the last sparks of light in Regina's eyes? What had he whispered in her ear to push her to kill? What was he going to do next to protect himself?

Cora should have known that it was impossible to break a deal made with him. Even without knowing, he had obtained what he had wanted.

The knowledge would be a sweet revenge. If he still had a heart somewhere in there, it would fall into dust as surely as if Cora had been able to rip it off his chest.

But what this same revelation would do to her daughter…

She couldn't hear their voices anymore.

This end, with all three of them there, with Eva's daughter surely having a hand in it… This end completed perfectly this sum of ironies that was Cora's entire life, and even her little victory on Eva and her heritage didn't satisfy her. A part of her feared the consequences.

A part of her finally worried for her daughter.

Many years ago, Cora had been absolutely unable to comprehend how two egoistical, cold and uncaring people could have been able to create such a luminous little being, fundamentally good and beautiful as had been this little girl with her wide, warm brown eyes and her big, bright smile.

But then she had learned to appreciate the irony and had worked on guiding her daughter toward another destiny than the one the girl had tried to choose, as Regina had always preferred love rather than power and had struggled more than once to make that choice before her fall.

Of course - and all the beauty of their story resided in this fact, in the end it had taken the will of both Cora and Rumpel to succeed in leading Regina on the path of their dark heritage.

Which was, admittedly, nothing surprising. It wasn't as if they had never been warned.

Magic always came with a price.

Maybe destroying the most beautiful thing they had ever done had been Rumpelstiltskin and Cora's price to pay.

Just before fading away, she felt something warm fall on the skin of her face, and Cora's very last though was coated with hope.

_Look, Rumpel. See? __She still knows how to cry._

O


End file.
